Scottish Citylink plans
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• Following last week's surprise announcement that National Express has acquired the Stagecoach express operations, National's former Scottish partner, Scottish Citylink, is making its own plans for the future.
Scottish Citylink is one of the Scottish Bus Group companies that is to be privatised during the next year, and contracts SBG companies to operate its services with blue and yellow-liveried coaches.
Citylink's agreement with National Express finishes on 28 October, at the end of the current timetable period. The joint involvement represents about 30% of Citylink's work. There are also Scotland-London services, always exclusively Scottish-run, and internal Scottish services like the busy 500 Edinburgh-Glasgow express.
Managing director Alan
Howes admits that the ending of the agreement has caused problems for the planned management-led employee buy out, but he feels that in the longer-term it will allow the company to expand into a UK and Europe-wide operator.
Citylink has always been seen as the junior partner in the relationship with National Express, and Howes welcomes the opportunity "to set up a more freely-competitive company, to offer a more comprehensive service to the public. We are now actively looking for new partners who would be interested in working with us as contractors or booking agents, or both, he says."
Another important aspect o the new arrangements is the booking agency agreements. National Express and Scottish Citylink had a well-developed network, with each partner concentrating on its own part of Britain. Although Stagecoa4 has an agency network in Sco land, this is nowhere near as comprehensive as Citylink's. But Citylink faces a major tas recruiting new agents in England and Wales.
Links with National Expres date back 60 years, when SM companies formed agreement with English companies like Ribble and United to operate services from Scotland to the north of England. These survived into NBC days, and became part of the National Express network.